II- El ciclo de "El Anillo", Kirov 2007.

MUSIC OPERA

Doggedly Running the Laps Demanded by the 'Ring' By ANTHONY TOMMASINI Published: July 21, 2007

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times The Norns in "Götterdämmerung," the last of the four operas of Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen" cycle, at the Metropolitan Opera House.

When the Kirov Opera ends its residency at the Lincoln Center Festival tonight, Valery Gergievwill have conducted his company in two overlapping cycles of Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen" over nine days. That is two performances each of the four daunting "Ring" operas with only one night off, last Sunday. Surely this brutal schedule accounts for the frustrating unevenness of the musical performances, not to mention the glitches that kept occurring with the staging. Mr. Gergiev, one of the busiest musicians in the business, has long been described as indefatigable. But during stretches of "Siegfried" on Wednesday night and "Götterdämmerung" on Thursday night, the final two installments in the "Ring," Mr. Gergiev and his players sounded pretty fatigued. Yet despite some bungled solo lines, patches of shaky execution, tentative entrances, especially from the brass, and other mishaps, Mr. Gergiev presided over engrossing accounts, over all, of these works. As in his performances of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre," he emphasized the rhapsodic sweep and volatility of the music. His ear for detail, as well as the distinctive sound and colorings of the Kirov orchestra, especially the dusky rich tone of the strings, brought jolts of freshness to these much-heard scores. In the subdued scene in "Siegfried" when Wotan, who appears incognito as the world-weary Wanderer, exchanges riddles with the cagey Nibelung dwarf Mime, the orchestra played with riveting tension and murky shadings. Thick, quiet chromatic string chords would sneak up on you, swell with sound and turn ominous. Mr. Gergiev took risks that paid off, often daring to conduct slower passages with uncommonly spacious tempos, never forcing or pushing the music. Sometimes, though, in other subdued episodes, this approach did not work, and the musical tension petered out. After a while it made sense that the strongest playing often came in the first scenes of each act, after Mr. Gergiev and his hard-pressed players had had a recuperative break. At its best Mr. Gergiev's work was insightful and electrifying. In the second act of "Götterdämmerung," when Brünnhilde thinks that she has been betrayed by Siegfried and succumbs to the machinations of the brooding villain Hagen, the music pulsed with driving energy and searing sound. The shattering orchestral piece that accompanies Siegfried's death was pushed to the extreme with raspy brass flourishes, savage percussion volleys and darkly weighty strings. Because these final two operas with their grueling lead roles were performed on successive nights, the production had two different couples playing Brünnhilde and Siegfried. Leonid Zakhozhaev in the title role of "Siegfried" may have a rather grainy and undersized heldentenor voice, and his singing was sometimes rough and approximate. On the other hand, he made it through this absurdly challenging role, singing with unflagging energy and projecting the dense impulsiveness of the godly young hero. The soprano Olga Sergeeva, who sang Brünnhilde in the "Walküre" I attended last Saturday, was in shakier vocal condition for the demanding final scene of "Siegfried." The gleam in her tone often turned strident, though, as before, there were sensitive and courageous aspects to her performance.

Larisa Gogolevskaya as Brünnhilde in the Kirov Opera production of "Götterdämmerung."

Larisa Gogolevskaya took over as Brünnhilde in "Götterdämmerung," offering a blazing, raw and impassioned account of the role. She seemed so determined to vanquish listeners with the intensity and cutting power of her singing that no one would care about the dicey pitch and hard-edged tone. Through sheer determination she pulled it off, though if she keeps this up she will not be singing the role much longer. There is a leathery quality in the voice of the hardy tenor Victor Lutsuk, who sang Siegfried in the final opera. Still, he gave an ardent, muscular and incisive performance, though he tired noticeably by the death scene. Evgeny Nikitin, a chilling Wanderer in "Siegfried," was back on Thursday night as Gunther. Other standouts were Zlata Bulycheva as Erda in "Siegfried" and Mikhail Petrenko's earthy Hagen and Valeria Stenkina's vulnerable Gutrune in "Götterdämmerung." For the final two operas the production, jointly conceived by Mr. Gergiev and the set designer George Tsypin, was as baffling as it was in the first two. Still, "Götterdämmerung," I thought, came the closest of the four stagings to realizing the conception, which strives for a timeless, placeless mythological aura while drawing on imagery from the folklore of the Caucasus Mountains, including Mr. Gergiev's native Ossetia. In the opening scene of "Götterdämmerung," the Three Norns have subcontracted the task of spinning the rope of destiny to a roster of limber dancers clothed in reddish, greenish, tattered tights, who hold a long, shiny chain broken up with globular balls, like some mythological rosary. The staging here had primordial allure. Many scenes in this "Ring" production people the story with dancers and mysterious silent figures. Sometimes it can seem fussy and silly. When Siegfried forges the broken pieces of the magic sword, rather than presenting a literal bellows and forge, the flames are depicted by dancing creatures with phosphorescent headdresses. Still, seeing Siegfried lamely waving a towel at the flame dancers to stoke the fire, and then picking up the molten hot sword using only a dishrag was a little ridiculous. Many "Ring" productions have chosen to give a more modern look to the Gibichung family — Gunther, his sister Gutrune, their half-brother Hagen and all their vassals — the first real mortals we meet in the story. This one depicted them as an ancient mythological clan with painted bodies and tribal gowns. Though a novel and potentially rich idea, the actual costumes were hard to take seriously. With his long tribal dress, his tight shirt with jagged stripes and his capped head, the menacing Hagen looked a little like a Navajo princess. And as usual in his work, Mr. Tsypin had an alarming way of asking singers to perform while standing precariously on set pieces, most noticeably here in the final duet of "Siegfried." The scene is staged atop one of the massive totemic mummylike figures that hover over the production. Poor Mr. Zakhozhaev and Ms. Sergeeva had to sing some of the hardest music in opera while striding across this narrow, lumpy set piece, tilted at a 45-degree angle. You kept worrying that they were going to stumble and fall. What "Ring" production has not provoked debate and divided audiences in recent years? Many aspects of this one, especially the music-making, will linger.

Related ArtsBeat: The Kirov 'Ring': Familiar Voices Among the Gods Kirov Brings Russian Soul, and Budget, to Its 'Ring' (July 16, 2007) Kirov "Ring" The Russian opera's production of Wagner's "Ring," presented by the Lincoln Center Festival. Videography by Nan Melville for The New York Times.

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

El ciclo de "El Anillo", Kirov 2007.

Music Review Kirov 'Ring' Cycle

Kirov Brings Russian Soul, and Budget, to Its 'Ring' By ANTHONY TOMMASINI Published: July 16, 2007

Damon Winter/The New York Times Kirov 'Ring' Cycles 1 and 2 continue this week at the Metropolitan Opera House. Above, "Das Rheingold."

Veteran opera buffs know all too well what it's like to sit incredulously through some pointlessly elaborate new production wondering how it was possible to squander so much money for so little effect. I had exactly the opposite reaction on Friday and Saturday nights at the Metropolitan Opera House, during the first two installments of the Kirov Opera's production of Wagner's "Ring," presented by the Lincoln Center Festival. In many scenes the stage was filled with genuinely intriguing imagery, evocative of ancient Russian folk and fine arts, and some strangely surreal touches befitting Wagner's mythological epic. Yet too often the sets by George Tsypin and the costumes by Tatiana Noginova just looked, well, cheap and tacky. If only this staging, a joint concept of the conductor Valery Gergiev and Mr. Tsypin, had had a proper budget, I kept thinking. Even some of the props looked like stuff from a high school theatrical. In "Das Rheingold" on Friday night the magic Tarnhelm that allows Alberich the Nibelung dwarf to change form or become invisible looked like a kitschy sorcerer's apprentice hat covered with gold foil, a silly thing that crinkled and threatened to come apart every time Alberich put it on.

VIDEO Kirov "Ring" The Russian opera's production of Wagner's "Ring," presented by the Lincoln Center Festival. Videography by Nan Melville for The New York Times.

In "Die Walküre" on Saturday night Brünnhilde and her Valkyrie sisters were dressed a little like Morticia in "The Addams Family." Their warrior helmets were glittering, feathered headdresses that would have looked right in a Las Vegas chorus girl revue. And did some prop person find their black, rubbery battle shields in the Halloween costume bin at Wal-Mart? The Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, the home of the Kirov Opera, is an institution with an awesome history. Mr. Gergiev, who runs the place, both the opera and ballet companies, has struggled valiantly over the years to secure financing, a task that has become more difficult as the government has floundered. Yet budgetary restraints do not seem to have affected the presentation of the music in this "Ring," so far. Mr. Gergiev drew an organic, rhapsodic and often riveting performance from the orchestra and the generally impressive cast. But the effect of the production was ultimately exasperating. In the opening scene of "Das Rheingold," the Rhinemaidens were joined in their underwater dwelling by somnolent podlike creatures and slithering dancers covered with dangling illuminated strands, like exotic animals in coral reefs. The imagery was exotic, maybe a little too Day-Glo, yet rather entrancing. The magic gold the Rhinemaidens guard was contained in (or actually was?) an imposing sphere with golden latticed walls, which at first looked otherworldly and beautiful. But when the lighting brightened, and the sphere was wheeled into full view and spun around, it rattled and suddenly looked sadly makeshift, like some huge drably painted Whiffle Ball.

RELATED BLOG ArtsBeat: The Kirov 'Ring': Familiar Voices Among the Gods

Hovering over the realm of Wotan and the gods were three enormous suspended sculptures, like gigantic petrified mummies. Again, I tried to give myself over to the totemic impact of the imagery. But the actual structures looked as if they had been made from papier-mâché. Fasolt and Fafner, the fearsome giants, were amusingly depicted as massive men of solid rock with movable arms for punching; the minuscule heads of the actual singers protruded from on top. They were like Stone Age versions of the rock-'em, sock-'em toy robots popular today. Again, though, the playful effect was undermined by the flimsy look of these granitic giants. This "Ring" production, introduced in 2003 in St. Petersburg, was built to be taken on the road, which no doubt put constraints on the designs. The larger question: Who directed this production? Like some conductors before him, Mr. Gergiev, who is listed as the production supervisor, may think he grasps better than any director how to stage the operas he knows so intimately. Not a wise idea. His indisputable talents are musical. At a time when the national characteristics of orchestras are increasingly homogenized into an international sound, the Kirov Orchestra seems distinctively Russian, with its dusky colorings, reedy and plaintive winds, mellow and weighty brass, and thick, expressive strings. Occasional mishaps in solo lines hardly mattered for all the urgency, nuance and texture of the playing. Mr. Gergiev is an impetuous musician who gives in to bolts of inspiration. His performances of a score seldom come out the same way twice. He may have less feeling than some great Wagnerians for the architectonic structure of these operas. And at times, as in the scene in "Die Walküre" when Siegmund and Sieglinde slowly discover that they are siblings and fall desperately into each other's arms, Mr. Gergiev dared to take spacious tempos, emphasizing tenderness over intensity, sometimes to a fault. But moment to moment, he drew rapturous playing from this orchestra of musicians who by now know what their idiosyncratic conductor is striving for.

Richard Termine for The New York Times The soprano Mlada Khudoley as Sieglinde in 'Die Walküre."

With his gravelly voice and earthy delivery, the tall and calmly charismatic bass Alexei Tanovitsky sounded as if he had stepped out of a performance as Boris Godunov into the role of Wotan. The mezzo-soprano Larissa Diadkova, who has performed Fricka at the Met, again proved terrifying in the role, singing with abandon, power and smoky colorings. The baritone Nikolai Putilin was a wonderfully bellowing Alberich, and Vasily Gorshkov, with his agile and cutting tenor voice, conveyed the cleverness of the demigod Loge, a master of machination as well as of fire. Though the tenor Oleg Balashov may have been a little vocally undersized for Siegmund in "Die Walküre," he brought a virile sound and crisp delivery to his performance and worked in poignant sympathy with his lovely and vulnerable Sieglinde, the soprano Mlada Khudoley, the vocal standout of the production so far, who has a lush, sizable and luminous voice. The Brünnhilde, Olga Sergeeva, who has sung the role at the Met under Mr. Gergiev, seemed to be pushing her voice worrisomely at times. There were rough patches and a few whelps in place of high notes. Still, she gave an impassioned and often subtle account of this touchstone and demanding role. With two more operas to go, this report on the Kirov "Ring" is provisional. Why do I suspect that trios of totemic mummy men will hover over the stagings of "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung?" Cycle 1 of the Kirov Opera's "Ring" concludes with "Siegfried" on Friday and "Götterdämmerung" on Saturday. Cycle 2 is presented tonight through Thursday, both at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 721-6500 or metopera.org.

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

"Xanadu" (1980), regresa a Broadway.

ARTS / THEATER

Heaven on Wheels, and in Leg Warmers By CHARLES ISHERWOOD Published: July 11, 2007

Peter Lueders/Paul Kolnik Studio Cheyenne Jackson and Kerry Butler in "Xanadu," a spoof of the 1980 movie starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly.

Can a musical be simultaneously indefensible and irresistible? Why, yes it can. Witness "Xanadu," the outlandishly enjoyable stage spoof of the outrageously bad movie from 1980 about a painter and his muse who find love at a roller disco in Los Angeles. The title doesn't ring a bell? Let me refresh your memory. In "Xanadu" did Newton-John a blooming film career destroy. (Sorry, Mr. Coleridge, I couldn't resist.) You probably remember how Olivia Newton-John, the pert, wholesome pop thrush, rocketed to film stardom opposite John Travolta in the Hollywood version of the musical "Grease." That was in 1978. A mere two years later she roller-skated into oblivion — or at least back to Australia — in a fabulously insipid turkey called "Xanadu," which didn't do much for Gene Kelly's career, either. "Xanadu" also helped kill the "Grease"-born movie musical revival right quick, and the film now resides, I trust, under toxic lockdown at Netflix shipping centers across the country. Watch it at your peril. Why, you may wonder, would anyone deem it necessary, or even worthwhile, to pay lavish mock homage to a dreadful movie by exhuming it for exhibition onstage? Has Broadway nothing better to do? Has the American musical theater reached such a nadir of inspiration?

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Kerry Butler, far right, with Jackie Hoffman, far left, and cast members in the musical "Xanadu," directed by Christopher Ashley.

Well, yeah. I guess. Whatever. Why pester me with silly questions when there's so much silly bliss to be had at the Helen Hayes Theater, where the new, improved "Xanadu" opened last night? In any case, Douglas Carter Beane, the impish playwright who has ingeniously adapted the screenplay for the stage (while wearing a Hazmat suit, I hope), trumps such hectoring queries by acknowledging the inanity of the enterprise himself. In his adorably ditzy new book for the musical, Mr. Beane posits 1980, the year "Xanadu" dawned and the year in which the stage version is set, as a cultural turning point. "The muses are in retreat," muses the god Zeus, played by Tony Roberts, in the musical's poignant climax. (Kidding!) "Creativity shall remain stymied for decades. The theater? They'll just take some stinkeroo movie or some songwriter's catalog, throw it onstage and call it a show." Prophetic words, mighty Zeus, but the creators and performers of "Xanadu" desecrate the theater with such sharp good humor and magnetic high spirits that you won't have much time to weep for the cultural blight that too much of Broadway has become. And in fact, there is enough first-rate stage talent rolling around in "Xanadu" to power a season of wholly new, old-school, non-jukebox musicals, if someone would get around to writing a few good ones. Kerry Butler, as the Greek demi-goddess Clio, who also roams Venice Beach as the Australian mortal Kira, is simply heaven on eight little polyurethane wheels. Or heaven in leg warmers. (Actually she's both: the skates and woolens are Ms. Newton-John's memorably ghastly signature look from the movie, though the costume designer David Zinn chose not to drape her in those fetching peasant blouses.) Ms. Butler is the rare Broadway ingénue who is as funny as she is pretty, and she sings gloriously, too, both in her own tangy Broadway belt and in a devastatingly funny impersonation of Ms. Newton-John's sweetly sighing soprano. (When Ms. Butler is speaking Australian, she's actually a ringer for a fresher import from Down Under, Nicole Kidman.) She's got a lovely line in arabesque on those skates, too! Can Audra McDonald or Kristin Chenoweth do that?

Peter Lueders/Paul Kolnik Studio Cheyenne Jackson in "Xanadu."

Clio-Kira sheds her inspirational light on a frustrated young would-be artist named Sonny, who spends his time making chalk murals on the sidewalk by the shore. Sonny has chalk for brains, too, and Cheyenne Jackson, the star of "All Shook Up," the forgettable Elvis jukebox musical, plays him beautifully as a big slab of prime beefcake in tube socks and denim cutoffs. Sonny's twinkling blue eyes have all the depth of a kiddie pool, his earnest effusions the hilarious aridity of soap-opera acting. (Mr. Jackson is a last-minute and temporary substitute for James Carpinello, star of the forgettable stage ripoff of "Saturday Night Fever," who was injured in a skating accident and will return to the role when he heals.) Working from a screenplay consisting of atrocious musical numbers Scotch-taped together with doltish dialogue, Mr. Beane filled the gaps by dreaming up tasty shtick for two of Clio's wicked sister muses, Calliope and Melpomene, who are played by the stage-devouring comic actresses Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa, respectively. Their theme song, "Evil Woman," is a highlight, as Ms. Hoffman, in her cat eyeglasses looking like a Roz Chast cartoon sprung to life, scats the shrieky guitar riffs while Ms. Testa bellows the chorus in chesty tones. Together or separately, they are both criminally funny. Perhaps you remember "Evil Woman," a hit for the not-quite- immortal '70s synth-rock outfit Electric Light Orchestra. (A clue: Sing the first syllable twice.) If you were at least tween-age in 1980 and in possession of a radio, you will probably recognize a big chunk of the pop score for "Xanadu," which includes the sultry ballad "Magic" and the pulsating title tune, written (like "Evil Woman") by Jeff Lynne, the songwriter for E.L.O. Back in the day, these were the kind of songs that you'd scoff at in public but crank up and sing along with in the privacy of your Camaro. Now, thanks to our metastasizing cultural affection for the drek of yesteryear (one day theses will be written about that seminal work "Mamma Mia!"), we are free to celebrate them in collective public rituals, as long as everyone agrees to keep tongues in cheeks.

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times From left, Mary Testa, Kerry Butler and Jackie Hoffman.

"Xanadu," which has mostly been directed at roller-derby speed by Christopher Ashley, does have a few dead spots in its brisk 90-minute running time. In addition to Zeus, Mr. Roberts plays the Gene Kelly role from the movie, a magnate named Danny Maguire who bankrolls Sonny's disco dreams. Mr. Roberts possesses a polished deadpan style, but Mr. Beane's inspiration seems to have failed him when it came to minting fresh fun from the subplot involving flashbacks to Danny's 1940s romance. The stage "Xanadu" can't really muster much in the way of an extravaganza, either, despite Dan Knechtges's mercilessly cheesy choreography and the music director Eric Stern's zesty pop arrangements. (For those attuned to higher musical planes, yes, he is that Eric Stern.) The production is skimpy on both the casting and design fronts. A few dozen audience members are seated onstage, but this device, used effectively in "Spring Awakening," seems less an aesthetic choice than an economic one here. With a cast of just 10 and minimal sets (the designer David Gallo seems to have blown much of the budget on disco balls), "Xanadu" uses these onstage viewers as unpaid extras and space-filling, mildly animated scenery. I can imagine, though, that members of the movie's cult following, amateur cultural archaeologists of all things '80s, would thrill to the prospect of being magically spirited into the swirling center of a beloved period artifact. "This is like children's theater for 40-year-old gay people!" cracks Ms. Hoffman's Calliope at one point, and she (or rather Mr. Beane) is only half-kidding. But that acidic epithet could be used to describe far too many more earnest Broadway duds of recent vintage. At least "Xanadu" is in on the joke. The show's winking attitude toward its own aesthetic abjectness can be summed up thus: If you can't beat 'em, slap on some roller skates and join 'em.

Strange Magic

XANADU Book by Douglas Carter Beane; music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar; based on the Universal Pictures film screenplay by Richard Danus and Marc Rubel; directed by Christopher Ashley; choreography by Dan Knechtges; music direction and arrangements by Eric Stern; sets by David Gallo; lighting by Howell Binkley; costumes by David Zinn; sound by T. Richard Fitzgerald and Carl Casella; projection design by Zachary Borovay; technical supervision by Juniper Street Productions; production stage manager, Arturo E. Porazzi; general manager, Laura Heller. Presented by Robert Ahrens, Dan Vickery, Tara Smith/B. Swibel and Sarah Murchison/Dale Smith at the Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. WITH: Kerry Butler (Clio/Kira), Cheyenne Jackson (Sonny), Tony Roberts(Danny Maguire/Zeus), Jackie Hoffman (Calliope/Aphrodite), Mary Testa (Melpomene/Medusa), Curtis Holbrook (Thalia/Siren/Young Danny/'80s Singer/Cyclops), Anika Larsen (Euterpe/Siren/'40s Singer/Thetis), Patti Murin (Erato/Siren/'40s Singer/Eros/Hera), David Tankersley (Featured Skater) and André Ward (Terpsicore/Siren/'80s Singer/Hermes/Centaur).

Related Old Movie, New Musical, First-Time Producers (July 7, 2007) Returning to Broadway on Celestial Roller Skates (June 17, 2007) Movie Review: 'Xanadu' (Aug. 9, 1980)

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

"Hairspray", de nuevo película en el 2007

MOVIES / REVIEW

Teenagers in Love and a Mom in Drag in the '60s By A. O. SCOTT Published: July 19, 2007

David James/New Line Cinema Christopher Walken, left, as Wilbur Turnblad, husband of Edna (John Travolta), shares a moment with his screen spouse in "Hairspray," the film version of the Broadway musical, itself adapted from the 1988 John Waters film.

That "Hairspray"is good-hearted is no surprise. Adam Shankman's film, lovingly adapted from the Broadway musical, preserves the inclusive, celebratory spirit of John Waters's 1988 movie, in which bigger-boned, darker-skinned and otherwise different folk take exuberant revenge on the bigots and the squares who conspire to keep them down. The surprise may be that this "Hairspray," stuffed with shiny showstoppers, Kennedy-era Baltimore beehives and a heavily padded John Travolta in drag, is actually good. Appropriately enough for a movie with such a democratic sensibility, there is plenty of credit to go around. Mr. Shankman, drawing on long experience as a choreographer, avoids the kind of vulgar overstatement that so often turns the joy of live musical theater into torment at the multiplex. The songs, by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, are usually adequate, occasionally inspired and only rarely inane. And they are sung with impeccable diction and unimpeachable conviction by a lively young cast that includes Nikki Blonsky, Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron and the phenomenally talented Elijah Kelley.

New Line Cinema John Travolta in "Hairspray" with Nikki Blonsky as Tracy.

Of course there are better-known, more-seasoned performers on hand as well, notably Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken and Mr. Travolta. But "Hairspray" is fundamentally a story about being young — about the triumph of youth culture, about the optimistic, possibly dated belief that the future will improve on the present — and its heart is very much with its teenage heroes and the fresh-faced actors who play them. Ms. Blonsky, a ball of happy, mischievous energy, is Tracy Turnblad, a hefty Baltimore high school student whose dream is to dance with the city's most telegenic teeny-boppers on "The Corny Collins Show." Ms. Bynes plays Penny Pingleton, Tracy's timid best friend, whose prim mother (Allison Janney) won't even let Penny watch the show, much less appear on it. Mrs. Pingleton can scarcely imagine that her daughter will eventually fall for Seaweed (Mr. Kelley), part of a group of black kids whom Tracy befriends in the detention hall after school.

New Line Cinema John Travolta in "Hairspray" with Nikki Blonsky as Tracy.

As Penny and Seaweed test the taboo against interracial romance, Tracy and Link Larkin (Mr. Efron), a "Corny Collins" dreamboat, take on the tyranny of slenderness. That "Hairspray" cheerfully conflates racial prejudice with fat-phobia is the measure of its guileless, deliberately simplified politics. Upholding both forms of discrimination is Velma Von Tussle (Ms. Pfeiffer), a television station executive who uses "The Corny Collins Show" — against the wishes of Corny (James Marsden) himself — as a way of maintaining the color line and promoting the celebrity of her blond, smiley daughter, Amber (Brittany Snow). "Hairspray" does not seriously propose that Tracy and her new African-American friends face equivalent forms of injustice. But it does make the solidarity between them feel like an utterly natural, intuitive response to the meanness and arrogance of their common enemies. "Welcome to the '60s," Tracy sings to her mother, conjuring up the New Frontier hopefulness of that decade's early years rather than the violence and paranoia of its denouement. In freezing history at a moment of high possibility — a moment whose glorious popular culture encompasses "West Side Story" and the Twist, early Motown and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound — "Hairspray" is at once knowingly corny and unabashedly utopian. On "The Corny Collins Show" Seaweed and his friends are relegated to a once-a-month Negro Day, presided over by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah). Tracy envisions a future when, as she puts it, "every day is Negro Day."

Reuters Mr. Travolta in "Pulp Fiction" with Uma Thurman.

What is missing from "Hairspray" is anything beyond the faintest whisper of camp. The original "Hairspray" may have been Mr. Waters's most wholesome, least naughty film, but there was no containing the volcanic audacity of Divine, who created the role of Edna Turnblad. Divine, who was born Harris Glen Milstead and who died shortly after the first "Hairspray" was released, belonged to an era when drag performance still carried more than a touch of the louche and the dangerous, and was one of the artists who helped push it into the cultural mainstream. Perhaps wisely Mr. Travolta does not try to duplicate the outsize, deliberately grotesque theatricality of Divine's performance or to mimic the Mermanesque extravagance of Harvey Fierstein's Broadway turn, choosing instead to tackle the role of Edna as an acting challenge. The odd result is that she becomes the most realistic, least stereotypical character in the film, and the only one who speaks in a recognizable (if not always convincing) Baltimore accent. ("Ahm tryna orn," she complains when she's trying to iron.) A shy, unsophisticated, working-class woman, Edna is ashamed of her physical size even as she seems to hide inside it, as if seeking protection from the noise and indignity of the world outside. It is Tracy who pulls her out of her shell, and without entirely letting go of Edna's timidity, Mr. Travolta explores the exhibitionistic and sensual sides of her personality.

Paramount Pictures Mr. Travolta in "Grease" with Olivia Newton-John.

Mr. Walken's gallantry in the role of Edna's devoted husband, Wilbur, is unforced and disarmingly sincere, and their duet, "(You're) Timeless to Me," is one of the film's musical high points. Another is "Without Love," in which the two young couples express their yearning with the help of some ingenious and amusing special effects. There are, to be sure, less thrilling moments, and stretches in which the pacing falters. But the overall mood of "Hairspray" is so joyful, so full of unforced enthusiasm, that only the most ferocious cynic could resist it. It imagines a world where no one is an outsider and no one is a square, and invites everyone in. How can you refuse? "Hairspray" is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has some mildly naughty jokes and innuendo.

Associated Press Mr. Travolta in "Urban Cowboy."

HAIRSPRAY Opens tonight in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco; tomorrow nationwide. Directed and choreographed by Adam Shankman; written by Leslie Dixon, based on the screenplay by John Waters and the musical stage play, book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Mr. Shaiman; director of photography, Bojan Bazelli; edited by Michael Tronick; score by Mr. Shaiman; production designer, David Gropman; produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 107 minutes.

Movie Minutes NJ Premiere

WITH: John Travolta (Edna Turnblad), Michelle Pfeiffer (Velma Von Tussle), Christopher Walken (Wilbur Turnblad), Amanda Bynes (Penny Pingleton), James Marsden (Corny Collins), Queen Latifah (Motormouth Maybelle), Brittany Snow (Amber Von Tussle), Zac Efron (Link Larkin), Elijah Kelley (Seaweed), Allison Janney(Prudy Pingleton), Jerry Stiller(Mr. Pinky), Paul Dooley (Mr. Spritzer) and Nikki Blonsky (Tracy Turnblad).

Keeping the beat Travolta´s rhythm

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

El Arca de Noé. Museo Skirball. Los Angeles.

Art Giving Life to Found Objects, Two by Two By JORI FINKEL Published: Published: April 29, 2007 LOS ANGELES J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times The children's space at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles was inspired by Noah's Ark and its parallel stories in many cultures. All Aboard "IT'S a law of nature: When the eyes are wet, the animal is alive," said Chris Green, stroking the head of a wooden deer. Most of the deer, which he built out of odd parts, looks rather abstract. The body is hollow, its form outlined with folding rulers and rigged with a faucet and other hardware to suggest the animal's own plumbing. The ears are found objects, a pair of wood shoe stretchers. But the face is sweetly realistic, a carving made of basswood with big, brown, glassy doe eyes. Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Green was pulling late nights back in his studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to finish building the deer and a couple of dozen other life-size animals. Crowded into a 400-square-foot room there, "they would freak me out," he said. "You're tired, you're working after hours, and you forget you've set up a coyote at eye level. But there he is, head carved, eyes glossy. In the back part of the brain, your lizard brain, your fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in." Now the doe and other animals preside over the entrance of a new 8,000-square-foot exhibition space here at the Skirball Cultural Center, really a children's museum that takes the form of Noah's Ark. J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times The display features puppets and sculptures, like this giraffe. An experimental puppeteer who has worked on shows with the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont and Basil Twist in New York, Mr. Green has brought a few animals to life before. In a puppet production of Stravinsky's opera "Oedipus Rex," he was the raven, bearer of omens. And he once, on his own, made a pocket-size marionette of a deer. But this is the first time he has created an entire menagerie â€" sculptures, semi-kinetic sculptures and puppets â€" for a more permanent stage set. The zoo of an installation fills the second floor of the Skirball's south hall. At 75 feet wide and 17 feet tall, the wooden ark will accommodate up to 125 visitors at a time when it opens to the public on June 26. J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times Kids can load pairs of animals onto a ramp to send into the ark. When Mr. Green walked around the ark during a moment of quiet before a round of focus groups, puppetry rehearsals and operational tests, the animals owned the place. There were more than 300, representing some 150 different species â€" from a giant tortoise made of a basketball hide to a green anaconda made of upholstery springs. Most come, as you would expect, in pairs. Outside the ark sit pairs of small foam penguins, giraffes and other animals, which kids can load onto a ramp to send into the ark. Inside, animals hang from all levels and sit in its boxy compartments. Deeper into the structure, past a bridge, the wood of the boat looks worn. Time â€" maybe the 40 days and 40 nights of the Bible â€" has passed. The rabbits have multiplied. The idea for the ark came from Skirball's founding president, Uri Herscher, who started thinking about a children's destination in the early 1980s, a good decade before the building opened. His trustees encouraged him to put adults â€" and the completion of their Moshe Safdie-designed museum â€" first. But the notion of a children's space was so compelling that he asked Mr. Safdie to design a flexible gallery space for it, although Mr. Herscher had no idea what the space would eventually look like. Ir al Video "We had been looking at children's museums for several years, and we never left terribly excited by what we saw," he said, citing the Boston Children's Museum as an exception. "Most of them have the same bright colors, the same building blocks, the same fire trucks. They are playgrounds, and they may be lovely playgrounds. But we wanted to do something more meaningful. We wanted a story." Then, seven years ago, he visited the art collection of a Skirball trustee, Lloyd E. Cotsen. Mr. Cotsen, the former president of Neutrogena, is known for amassing textiles and children's books from different cultures. Mr. Herscher discovered that he also collected miniature "folk arks" from around the world, more than 100 dollhouse-size arks from a range of countries. Mr. Herscher found his concept. "Noah's Ark is a timeless story with parallels throughout the globe," he said. "You can find a flood narrative from every culture that has a river, starting with the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia." He pointed out that all the stories share some basic symbolic elements: "They all have floods. They all have arks. And they all have rainbows â€" signs of hope and renewal." J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times The ark's animals are made of found and repurposed objects. He sees the lesson as one of survival through collaboration. "Noah's Ark is about second chances," he said. "And it is about diversity: different animals learning to live together under a single shelter." All Aboard The story is not, at least in this incarnation, much about Noah. Although the Skirball is a Jewish museum, it left the Old Testament hero and his family out of the installation. And it supplied little text. A few phrases projected onto the floor of the ark encourage visitors to board it and "journey together." A book in the exhibition gathers flood legends from around the world. What happened to Noah? "I'm not a worshiper of a lone ranger," Mr. Herscher said. "I love biblical heroes, but I think biblical heroes are a compilation of many characters. Noah represents more than one person in his generation." Mr. Green is more direct. "That's an easy one: You're Noah, we're all Noah, we're all working together to save the planet." What might be harder, he says, is if children ask about God. "We haven't really discussed that yet. My feeling is it's probably better to answer a question with a question, like, 'What do you believe?' " J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times An instrument case forms the crocodile's mouth. Building the ark at the Skirball museum was itself a major collaboration, taking six years and costing $5 million. The museum secured funds from Wells Fargo and Mr. Cotsen, who donated his folk arks. And it brought in many species of consultants, from animal-behavior experts to exhibition designers. A specialist in ropes and challenge courses built climbing walls into the hull of the ark. A sound-effects expert helped to develop a "conduct-a-storm" display, where children can work together to simulate the sounds of rain, wind and thunder. A lighting designer figured out how to float a rainbow on the show's last wall. And Mr. Green was not the only one building the animals. He had help from Eric Novak, who carved most of the heads. They handcrafted about 30 of the most prominent animals, while Alan Maskin designed hundreds of background animals, which he sent out for fabrication. This work was a departure for Mr. Maskin, an architect with the Seattle firm Olson Sund-berg Kundig Allen. Best known for building high-end art museums and homes, the firm beat out dozens of children's exhibition designers to land the job of raising the ark. Mr. Maskin, who once worked as a children's educator, took the role of art director, overseeing much of the collaboration and discovering a knack for whipping out animal sketches at a breakneck pace. J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times Chris Green, puppeteer, is the mastermind behind the ark's creatures. Mr. Green has brought a few animals to life before for plays, but this is the first time he has created a complete set of animals, some of which are semi-kinetic, for a more permanent stage set. His colleagues at the firm focused on the construction. "There's a sort of abstract relationship between our building and real boat construction," Mr. Maskin said. "It approximates a boat with its beams and ribs, but it would not actually float." (This being Los Angeles, however, the ark was built to survive an earthquake.) As for the ark's contents, Mr. Maskin aimed high. "The big shift in children's museums in the '60s," he explained, "is that designers started getting on their hands and knees and looking at the world from the children's point of view. That was radical and important, but it left out adults who are five or six feet tall and have different perspectives. We made it a priority to engage adults as well." One way to do this, he suggests, is through the artistry of the animals. Marni Gittleman, who now has the title head of Noah's Ark at the Skirball, knew Mr. Green from her days as an exhibition developer in New York. Two years ago she invited him to come to the Skirball and meet the team. She described Mr. Green's initial talk as "thoughtful and magical â€" he was wearing a backpack and started unloading these creatures." One was a bee made out of an antique hand drill. Acetate wings, glued onto a wooden dowel that ran through the body, would spin when the handle was cranked. J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times Mr. Green visited the Bronx Zoo and used photographs by Eadweard Muybridge of animals in motion for inspiration. "There was a transparency to it, so you could see how it worked," recalled Mr. Green. "It was like an old Victorian toy." Transparency was one of the basic design principles established by the Skirball. Durability, one reason many animals in the ark lack tails, was another. And of course safety was an issue. But the Skirball team was also working with a notion of sustainability â€" which generally meant using wood, avoiding plastics and synthetics, and incorporating repurposed objects. Every animal Mr. Green designed for the ark features something scavenged or repurposed. A pair of flamingo puppets have pouchy pink purses as bodies and fly swatters as feet. The jaws of the crocodiles are formed from a violin case (for the female) and a viola case (for the male), with the humps made from pieces of a car tire. The zebras' haunches consist of black-and-white rotary ventilator turbines, and their manes are made of salvaged organ keys. All Aboard Mr. Green sees this kind of resourcefulness as a staple of the puppet business. "A lot of us are drawn to the puppet world because we have many interests," he said. "You can be a sculptor, a writer, a performer and a researcher all at once. Sometimes I create an entire show just because I want to build stuff for it." For the ark, his research meant visiting the Bronx Zoo and consulting photographs, including some by Eadweard Muybridge, of animals in motion. While Mr. Green was not going for realism, he wanted to capture the animals' natural scale and form. "The problem with using found objects is that they can be clunky," he said. "If you can make a woman out of a tin can, it's still a tin can. I worked hard on the line of the animals to give them a kind of grace of movement â€" nothing too blocky or cutesy." The repurposing also has an environmental bent, illustrating how to make the most of limited resources. "No piano was killed to make the zebras," he said. "These are replacement organ keys I bought on eBay for $70." J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times The animals were designed to be durable and sustainable, which generally meant using wood and avoiding plastics and synthetics. And the type of zebra he chose was not random. Mr. Green modeled his semi-kinetic sculptures on the Grevy's zebra from Africa, known for its very narrow stripes and its fast-shrinking population in Ethiopia and Kenya; it was declared an endangered species in 2000. Likewise, he identifies his deer as the critically endangered sika deer from Siberia, China and Manchuria, and the crocodile as the rare saltwater crocodile from Australia. If all goes as planned, this kind of eco-history will not be lost on visitors. Mr. Green spent a week here this month training a dozen new Skirball employees to involve kids in activities and teach them about the animals. He also showed them how to work the puppets, which will be taken down from their perches for performances. He taught a modified style of bunraku, the traditional Japanese puppetry known for putting three people on one puppet â€" one on the puppet's feet, another on the left hand and a third on the head and right hand. "I come from the dance puppetry world, where the puppeteer is visible, not hidden," Mr. Green said. "The physical movements of the puppeteer are integral to the performance." Then he made a connection to his standing sculptures. "But you know I see the sculptures as puppets too," he said. "They are also alive. They are just paused puppets. If you turn your back on them, they'll sneak up on you." Copyright by the New York Times 2007 Skirball Cultural Center 2701 North Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90049 Telephone: (310) 440-4500

Arte del Imperio Comercial Portugués. Siglos 16 y 17.

ART & DESIGN

Art Review "Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries" Portugal, Conquering and Also Conquered By HOLLAND COTTER Published: June 29, 2007

Victoria and Albert Museum, London Homage or sendup? A 17th-century Mughal portrait of a European, at the Sackler.

WASHINGTON, June 22 — A little-known fact: A version of the Internet was invented in Portugal 500 years ago by a bunch of sailors with names like Pedro, Vasco and Bartolomeu. The technology was crude. Links were unstable. Response time was glacial. (A message sent on their network might take a year to land.) They put up with it all. They were hungry to gain access to the world. That's the basic story of "Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17 Centuries" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, a show that glows like a treasury, radiates like a compass and seems as rich with potential information as the World Wide Web.

Detroit Institute of Arts An ivory knife case from the Kongo.

You need only scan the 250 objects gathered from museums in China, India, Japan, South America and Europe to sense the scope of a project that was many years and miracles of diplomacy in the making. (The guest curator, Jay A. Levenson, director of the international program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, did much of the legwork.) It's a big show; it fills the Sackler and flows into the National Museum of African Art next door. Aesthetically, it's prodigious. With filigreed Kongo ivories, gilded Qing astrolabes, Brazilian featherwork, Sri Lankan rock-crystal, mother-of-pearl Mughal inlay and life-size Portuguese carvings of angels and saints, it has something even for someone who has seen everything before. Most of the objects are sorted into geographical units defining the various parts of the world that fell within Portugal's sphere of influence during the centuries when that small country was a global power. The fulcrum on which the show turns is Portugal itself. In the so-called age of exploration, it was pretty much everywhere.

Luis Pavão/Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon A Japanese flask from the Momoyama period of the late 16th century.

A strip of land running along the Atlantic edge of Spain, Portugal was a maritime culture. Already, in the 15th century, its merchant-sailors were feeling their way down the west coast of Africa, keeping an eye out for gold, slaves, potential Christian converts and information about places, things and people they didn't know. There was a lot that the Portuguese, and other Europeans, didn't know. The world maps that open the exhibition inspire a mild sense of vertigo, so disorienting are their distortions and omissions. In a hand-drawn "world map" from around 1489, Europe is more or less center stage; Africa is a slug-shaped mass, Asia a big, bland lump. There are no Americas and no Australia. They didn't exist yet.

State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Hybrid art: An ivory Madonna and Child (late 16th or early 17th century) from China.

But maps changed fast. They had to. In 1488, as the finishing touches were probably being applied to this one, Bartolomeu Dias, an ambitious Portuguese seaman, rounded the tip of Africa and looked on the Indian Ocean. A decade later another adventurer, Vasco da Gama, followed his lead and made it to India. Soon afterward, Portugal engineered a destiny-shaping commercial coup when it took control of the international spice trade, centered in Indonesia. It also established a store-minding colonial outpost in Goa, India, from which new art emerged, part Indian, part European and entirely something else. In an ivory sculpture of a Krishna-like Jesus, and in a translucent tortoise-shell bowl that seems to burn like an open fire, you can see that something else.

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien Kunstkammer, Vienna A rhinoceros-horn cup from the Ming dynasty.

China was next on the itinerary, as always a tough nut to crack. Then came Japan, where the insistent religious evangelism that loomed large in Portugal's export package really paid off, spiritually and aesthetically, inspiring a wave of Japanese conversions that in turn sparked an industry in a home-grown devotional art. But the mood wasn't pure brotherly love. Many Japanese regarded the Western "barbarians" with disdain, and this, too, found an outlet in art. If a missal stand covered with gold-leaf flowers and shell-inlay birds is one of the show's prettiest objects, a lacquer food box with images of clownish, snorkel-nose Europeans is one of the funniest. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, another go-getter, Pedro Álvares Cabral, had reached Brazil, though this was an accident; he was shooting for India. Anyway, he made the best of his error by starting a lucrative trade in a local hardwood. And simply by being where he was when he was, he entered history as a founding father of the only substantial land-based colony that Portugal ever had.

The Freer Gallery of Art "Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings," a watercolor from the Mughal dynasty (1615-1618)

The Portuguese, unlike the Spanish, weren't of a settling-down disposition. They liked to do business on the move. Typically, they would sail into a port, make some lasting contacts, sell, buy and move on, repeating the same routine later. This isn't to say that Portugal had no empire. It did have one, and for a while it was vast. But it was also, in a sense, virtual, taking the form of disposable property rather than real estate. Brazil was the primary exception. The Portuguese occupied it, worked its land and people hard, and imported slaves from Africa for good measure. Here, too, a hybrid culture grew, but one more intense and lasting than elsewhere. In Brazil, Roman Catholic church art entered a beyond-Baroque, laceratingly emotive phase; a small room of devotional sculpture in the show is as steamy as a pressure cooker. Simultaneously, grass-roots religions developed, as Brazil's native and African people took a foreign faith they had been handed, radically customized it and through its new form reclaimed power. Many Brazilian slaves came from parts of Africa — the kingdoms of Benin and Kongo, and present-day Sierra Leone — that had long been under Portuguese supervision. And artists from these areas regularly produced art, specifically ivory carvings, for the European market. The work ranged from elaborate prestige commissions to modest, delicate animal-head spoons. Fancy or not, this art was always inventively conceived and exquisitely made.

The British Library Board "The Drowning of Bahadur Shah La'l Agra" from India (circa 1603-04)

The selection of it at the National Museum of African Art was the high point of the show for me. I had to pull myself away. Did the carvers who made these sculptures consider their work as a kind of tourist art, tailored to European expectations, and perhaps subtly pricking European pretensions and adding African content like a secret signature? If so, this is some of the greatest tourist art ever made, souvenir items of humbling magnificence. Europeans fully recognized the beauty of this art, its fineness and preciousness. That's why so much of it has been preserved in Kunstkammer, or treasure room, collections, set among other objects considered wondrous but strange. What was often forgotten was that these ivories were carved by Africans. For many Europeans, the words African and art did not compute. Over all, "Encompassing the Globe" represents a European sensibility, and a one-directional one. In a 17th-century painting of an Indian woman done in Brazil by the Dutch artist Albert Eckhout, the nude subject strikes a conventional portrait pose against a bucolic landscape. We're in both Brazil and Europe, an interesting idea. Then we notice that the woman is holding a severed human hand; a human foot protrudes from the basket on her back. Suddenly, she's a cannibal, a savage. That's how Eckhout sees her. That is his connection to her. But in reality connections are mutual, psychologically interactive; they flow both ways, as they often do in the art chosen for this show, which is what makes it more than a treasury. We can never know what the woman in Eckhout's painting might have thought of him, this peculiar white man making marks with a wet stick. But we do have examples of other outside perspectives on the West to balance the ones we know so well.

Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden A brass statue from Nigeria (circa 16th to 17th century)

Again, there are the Japanese artists responding in paintings to alien Europeans centuries ago. They see blundering creatures barging in from nowhere, wearing silly clothes and acting as if they owned the world. But they also see people who came with a very interesting religion that valued humility and charity above all else. Mughal art communicates similarly conflicted attitudes. One 16th-century miniature, as vivid as a news clip, depicts a mob of Portuguese sailors attacking and killing the sultan of Gujarat. And we get a pretty good idea of where the artist's sympathies lie. But what to make of another painting, this one of a European gent with a hankie in one hand, a sword in the other, and a two-tone cloak over one shoulder? An admiring portrait? An ethnographic study? A sendup? A little of each? Like most art, this little picture gives out and picks up signals, suggests ideas, hints at opinions and invites responses, all at once. Many of the objects at the Sackler do the same, glinting and flickering through the galleries like nodes on a switchboard. All the lines are active, and one message keeps coming through: that everything is connected, always has been. The version of the Internet invented in Portugal centuries ago was also being invented in Delhi, and Nagasaki, and Benin, and Bahia. It was all one network. In Washington we start to see the links.

Multimedia Treasures of the World

"Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries" continues through Sept. 16 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, (202) 633-4880, and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, (202) 633-4600, in Washington. Correction: July 2, 2007 An art review in Weekend on Friday about "Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries," at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, misidentified the nationality of the 17th-century artist Albert Eckhout, whose painting of an Indian woman in Brazil is in the exhibition. He was Dutch, not Danish.

Copyright by the New York Times 2007